DOVER — Thomas Johnson, chief of the Dover Police Department, approached Dover Mayor Robin Christiansen about reviving the Dover Police Academy last summer to ensure officers received training in the fall amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

That’s because the Delaware State Police Academy was nearly filled up and Dover needed to have seven officers fulfill their training due to several retirements within the department.

Once the mayor gave the thumbs up, Chief Johnson and his staff quickly put together a training program during the crisis that received rave reviews, not only from the Dover officers, but from police from other municipalities who also received training in Dover.

Years ago, the Dover Police Department held its own training and had obtained certification for operating a police academy in Delaware. That certification had not lapsed, so the Dover Police Academy is a fully certified academy in the state of Delaware.

Now, the chief is hoping the Dover Police Academy can become a permanent institution.

Tuesday night, the Dover Council of the Whole’s Legislative, Finance and Administration Committee unanimously approved another Dover Police Academy that will take place this spring but is waiting until it gets a clearer idea of the expenses involved if the academy is to continue any further than that.

Chief Johnson expects to keep the spring academy – which will start on April 11 – at around 25 officers, including six from the Dover Police Department, leaving room for 19 others from other municipalities.

Chief Johnson and the city manager’s office appear to have differing views on the future of the Dover Police Academy once the COVID-19 restrictions are finally lifted.

“We just have a couple of things that we might not be 100% on the same page yet on the trajectory of the academy,” Chief Johnson said, in reference to acting City Manager Matt Harline. “I would definitely assert that part of our original plan involved a spring semester, if for no other reason, we’re still going to be in COVID conditions. The access to the State Police Academy, as far as the enrollment we need, there’s still going to be some barriers there.

“The projected tuitions that we would get from neighboring departments, who are very enthusiastic at least up to this point with the product that we’re delivering, is going to help round out the unexpected costs that we knew were going to occur.”

Mr. Harline isn’t sure if the Dover Police Academy is sustainable beyond this spring due to budgetary and staff concerns.

Mr. Harline pointed out that the Dover Police Department had eight officers of its own to train last fall and has seven more that need training this spring. He said those numbers are a little higher than the department’s average replacement due to retirements.

He said the net cost of the fall Dover Police Academy was around $9,600, which included both capital costs and operational costs and “they are not well separated.”

“It’s hard to imagine that we can add another entire function to the police department without adding additional staff,” Mr. Harline said. “There’s a lot to put together between now and October 2021 if we want to continue this path past this spring.

“I think they did a great job and put together an academy (last fall) with virtually no warning. I think we might be able to come close to breaking even, not counting staff time, in the spring of 2021 if we can get enough cities to participate. But I think we’ve got a huge hill to climb, plus we’re putting in body-worn cameras which is going to take some policy and some training. I think it’s a huge hill to climb to add (a police academy) as an ongoing thing without some (financial) help.”

He said he has concerns about putting too much money into one basket.

“Does this need to be a new city of Dover activity when we are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on additional officers, hundreds of thousands of dollars on body cameras?” asked Mr. Harline. “How much money are you willing to raise taxes for the citizens of Dover for a stake in a municipal police academy?

“Now we’re talking about putting a lot of resources towards something where we’re not getting as much bang for our buck probably in the future.”

Setting the standard

While members of the Legislative, Finance and Administration Committee appear to be split when it comes to the future of the Dover Police Academy beyond this spring, Councilman Ralph Taylor Jr. said this is a unique chance for Dover to make its mark when it comes to police reform within the state, especially since it is committed to more interactive community policing in the future.

He said having the Dover Police Academy makes “perfect sense” in helping other municipalities hit the standard that the Dover Police Department is striving for.

“With Dover spearheading (police) reforms, it makes perfect sense that Dover PD train officers within the state on policing in 2021 and beyond,” said Mr. Taylor, a 20-year veteran of the Dover Police Department. “We have complete control with how the mandate for police training is implemented, maybe not everything that is taught, but how it’s implemented.

“When we’re relying on the Delaware State Police, we will not get that, solely because they are not a municipality. They’re not teaching all of the officers on how to communicate with citizens during an in-process complaint. When things are bad, we need people who are skilled.

“We are taking our rightful place as the No. 1 agency here in the state of Delaware. If you’re the No. 1 agency, you should be the one doing the training. I’m a firm believer in what Chief Johnson is doing. The community policing unit is vital. It will also be extremely vital when it comes to the police academy because we teach the new officers how to engage our citizens before they get an opportunity to get out on the street and do it on their own. We teach them.”

Councilman David Anderson said not so fast on any such commitment from the city past this spring. Not without further research and a look at how it will affect the city’s Fiscal Year 2022 budget.

“I would support the staff recommendation because I think we need to give authority to move towards the spring semester and to authorize the chief to do the research,” Mr. Anderson said. “Just because the staff recommendation from Mr. Harline is there doesn’t commit us to the fall.

“I’m not committed to the fall yet because we don’t know what the (COVID) conditions will be. We don’t know about (potential) grants. Those things could fall apart. I think Mr. Harline’s recommendation leaves the door open. I think there are a lot of questions that I still have before we can commit to that.”

Councilman Fred Neil originally made a motion to table the Dover Police Academy issue but eventually withdrew that and made the motion that the committee go forth with the spring academy, although he still wants to see more details on what the expenses will be.

“I think what we are looking at is now what are the costs going to be if we will continue this and how urgent is it for us to continue this?” Mr. Neil said. “I’m in favor of doing this but what I would suggest is we take it at this time so each action figure that (the police department has) presented, what are these costs that are going to be brought to us, because we are going to have a spring program.

“What we are looking at now is what’s going to happen in the fall and the future if there’s still not space available in the state academy. That’s going to bring a potential that we and other communities are going to need to train people and that would be a reason for doing it and (budget-wise it will) probably be at least a break even for this.”

Searching for grant money

Chief Johnson indicated to the Legislative, Finance and Administration Committee that he has had conversations with state legislators about the possibility of acquiring grants to help his department move forward with the Dover Police Academy past this spring’s semester.

“I had a very good conversation with Sen. Trey Paradee (D-Dover),” he said. “He came and toured our facility and we had discussions of what might be occurring in the latest legislative session, and on February 2nd I will be speaking to a combined session of the Kent and Sussex Counties Chief of Police Organizations to gauge their interest and support in the continuation of our academy and what steps they’d be willing to take to make sure we are successful.

“We’re starting to see all kinds of alignment with our community-policing mission and we have pretty much adopted a custom curriculum that is based in community policing with a deliverable for municipal police departments. We have been signaled that there is going to be some grant money available to help subsidize some of the costs related to instruction that’s beyond the core curriculum.”

Mr. Harline said he was impressed by how the Dover police responded in getting its academy up and running during a health crisis last October. He just would like to make sure that the numbers all make sense in order to move forward with the academy past this spring.

“There are some costs that will have to be evaluated if you want to look at going forward. One of those is the staff time for instruction,” he said. “It’s not included, and it must be evaluated. We’re adding positions, so obviously we have a lot of work for the police to do. We’re not going to have slack time, even if we bring in officers from other departments to assist with the training.

“We haven’t captured those costs for training and we need to account for that. We also need to make sure that the overtime costs are included in prep.

“I think the plan to move forward for spring 2021 is something that we’re going to need to do and it’s something that’s going to cost us about $16,000, plus staff time if there is sufficient cooperation from other cities. We might get as much as $15,000 reimbursed on that (with tuition) from other communities. We won’t have quite as many officers to train in the spring, so we’ll have a few more spots for paying customers. There’s a lot to consider if we’re going to go beyond the spring of 2021.”

Chief Johnson believes having Dover run its own police academy has many more positive than negatives.

“I don’t want to overspeak or overstep,” he said. “It’s a fluid process but my anticipation is that we think it’s going to be a net positive that the academy continues and we just have to figure out a way to do that that will pass muster for our policing needs, but also for an accountability standpoint so council can feel confident that we’re dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s appropriately.

“Yes, there is a lot of work to be done here and a lot of questions that have to be answered not only to support the city manager’s office and their efforts to keep track of everything, but just organizationally so we can see what the potential that could be realized here.”